Outsiders in French Society, Battling Occupiers and Collaborators

The Army of Crime

Simon Abkarian, with handgun, as Missak Manouchian, and Robinson Stévenin as another Resistance fighter, in “Army of Crime,” by Robert Guédiguian.Credit
Lorber Films

The closest person to a protagonist in the gripping historical mosaic “Army of Crime” is the eminent Armenian poet Missak Manouchian (Simon Abkarian). A militant Communist and hero of the French Resistance, executed by the Nazis in 1944, he is the noblest figure in a sprawling, semifictional movie that has enough characters to fill an entire neighborhood.

As the story begins in 1941 in occupied Paris, Germany has just invaded Russia. Manouchian, along with fellow Communists, is rounded up and detained at a nearby camp from which he is released after signing a document disavowing his politics. A reflective soul, scraps of whose poetry are heard in the film, Manouchian does not believe in killing. And the scenes of his rendezvous with his beautiful, adoring French wife, Mélinée (Virginie Ledoyen), who risks her life to bring him food while he is interned, lend the movie a faint romantic blush.

But when the Nazis crack down on the Resistance, Manouchian’s philosophy toughens. He joins the FTP-MOI, an armed unit of anti-fascist partisans — mostly Communist, mostly Jewish immigrants from Spain, Hungary, Poland, Armenia and Italy — and becomes its commander. For his terrorist initiation, he tosses a grenade into a group of German soldiers, as two younger colleagues swoop in and finish off those who are still alive.

“Army of Crime,” whose title alludes to Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1969 masterpiece, “Army of Shadows” (set in the same period), was directed by Robert Guédiguian, a Marseille-based filmmaker of German and Armenian parentage, and adapted from a story by Serge Le Péron. It also refers to the infamous “Affiche Rouge” (red poster) circulated by the Nazis on which the headline, “L’Armée du Crime” (“Army of Crime”), was plastered under the anti-fascist partisans’ photographs.

Early-1940s Paris, as evoked by the film, is a city where much of the time life seems to go on as usual until a bomb or a shooting interrupts the apparent placidity. Unlike Melville’s film, it pointedly disputes the idea of a unanimous French Resistance. Behind the scenes the Paris police, eager to impress the Nazis, supervise grisly tortures of suspected partisans. Pujol (Jean-Pierre Darroussin), an inspector in the neighborhood where the Resistance is centered, is emblematic of the double-dealing treachery of French officials in the Vichy government. Trucks containing Jewish deportees rumble through the streets and give pedestrians only a moment’s pause.

The movie’s casting of a very wide net robs it of dramatic solidity. We meet not only several hotheaded young partisans, but also their families, who, in varying degrees, shrink from their children’s daredevil heroics. These portraits, however brief, are finely etched. Together they convey the sense of an underground movement collectively holding its breath. If the decision to concentrate on a group rather than on individuals lends “Army of Crime” a semidocumentary authenticity, it dilutes its emotional impact by going off on too many tangents.

The story is told in flashback from the opening moments, shot inside a prison bus in which 23 FTP-MOI partisans, rounded up for execution, are shown peering glumly through barred windows as a roll call of their names is intoned. From there it backtracks three years to introduce Missak and Mélinée, and two young firebrands, Marcel Rayman (Robinson Stévenin), a Jewish student of Polish origins and a swimming champion, and Thomas Elek (Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet), a Hungarian, carrying out daredevil terrorist acts.

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Marcel vents his rage by approaching individual German soldiers and asking for a light for a cigarette. As they reach for a match, he pulls a gun and shoots them at close range. Thomas’s most spectacular act is to pack a bomb in a hollowed-out volume of “Das Kapital” and set it off in a crowded bookstore.

The partisans are not above sentimental scruples. They can’t bring themselves to blow up a brothel frequented by Germans, because the women are so pretty. During this nighttime mission, they lose the grenade pin and scramble around to find it in the darkness. It is the film’s only scene approaching levity.

The individual stories are loosely drawn together once Missak takes over, and orders are given for a more organized military campaign. The infuriated Nazis finally go into full retaliatory mode after the murder of a general. There are harrowing scenes in which a blowtorch is applied to the torso of one suspect, and another is subjected to a 1940s version of waterboarding.

Was it all for naught? Only weeks after the 23 partisans were arrested (and all but two promptly executed), Paris was liberated. “Army of Crime” is a passionate act of remembrance.

ARMY OF CRIME

Opens on Friday in Manhattan.

Directed by Robert Guédiguian; written by Mr. Guédiguian, Serge Le Péron and Gilles Taurand, based on a story by Mr. Le Péron; director of photography, Pierre Milon; edited by Bernard Sasia; music by Alexandre Desplat; production designer, Michel Vandestien; costumes by Juliette Chanaud; produced by Dominique Barneaud, Marc Bordure and Mr. Guédiguian; released by Lorber Films. At the Quad Cinema, 34 West 13th Street, Greenwich Village. In French and German, with English subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 19 minutes. This film is not rated.

A version of this review appears in print on August 20, 2010, on Page C6 of the New York edition with the headline: Outsiders in French Society, Battling Occupiers and Collaborators. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe